Toys stolen from Toys for Tots

Toys stolen from Toys for Tots

Steve Diemler, serving as Toys for Tots coordinator for Marine Corps League, Samuel F. Gearhart Detachment, carries a box filled with donated toys and goods to a delivery truck in December 2014 as members of the Salvation Army pick up toys and donations.

Photo by
Kris Wilson
/News Tribune.

Police are looking for the person or persons who stole 12 boxes of toys recently from a Fulton area storage locker.

Those toys were being stored by Melissa Barnes, local coordinator of Toys for Tots, which distributes Christmas gifts to more than 6,000 needy children in Central Missouri. The program is headquartered in Columbia but also distributes in Fulton.

"They took 12 big boxes of my (Toys for Tots) toys," Barnes said.

Barnes said the theft was discovered Tuesday at a storage locker unit off North U.S. Business 54. She said someone called and told her it look liked the unit she rented for the toy drive had been breached, and she went straight there.

"You could see toys laying out on the ground," Barnes said. "They didn't just take the lock — they did damage to the door."